I really don't see Clear, TSA precheck, etc. as any different from a computer security company that also is responsible for releasing viruses and exploits into the world.
The long lines at airports don't need to exist. It's security theater. They are selling a solution to a problem of their own making.
The fact that that problem is a gateway to a necessity (for many) like air travel, puts it clearly in the category of extortion. If I were in charge, Clear's business would be outright illegal.
The purpose of things like Clear and TSA Pre is to ensure that anyone remotely proximate to power won't experience the full unpleasantness of the TSA system. That way they'll have less incentive to challenge the system.
To my knowledge and much to my chagrin, TSA Pre is not available for H1B holders (only lawful permanent residents - green card holders). If that’s discriminatory or not is in the eye of the beholder.
PreCheck itself bought from TSA is only available to citizens/nationals/LPRs, but nonresident citizens of a handful of other countries can get Global Entry from CBP, which includes PreCheck benefits as well as expedited immigration/customs handling.
I frequently create a new account so that I can post freely. I always try to post substantively, though of course a reader may disagree with this self-assessment. Were new accounts required to wait if either:
1. Create a new account every so often, so that in the event that I see a topic I’d like to comment on, I’m not precluded.
2. Just not post.
Were 2 to apply to a great many people I fear HN would be worse off. And anyway committed assholes would just take door number 1.
If you read my other comment, you can see we are 180° apart… or are we? I want a smooth path through a miserable situation, so I take the best option available.
There’s no way security lines are slow so-and-only-so that Clear may exist; slow seems inevitable.
How may I help bring about this world of line-free travel for all?
I meant it seems inevitable if third-party/private solutions would not be allowed. It also seems possible a fast and efficient government solution could be developed. I don’t suppose I should hold my breath on that one, eh?
That said, I’ve noticed the lines at Global Entry are now often longer than regular ordinary passport control. Maybe put that management team on the pre-check situation.
Then you mean that a better policy would solve it, but a policy failure is inevitable. I think that's exactly what the previous poster meant: that the long lines are a result of a failed policy.
I totally agree with this article. I have TSA pre, have several parties with who are willing to subsidize my clear membership (credit cards, FF programs etc.), and I get super pissed by the line cutting. Yet I refuse to join clear for two reasons. 1) I do not trust a private company to use and protect my biometric data (yes the govt isn’t much better, but that ship sailed when I got a passport/DL). And 2) I think it’s morally wrong to privatize access to federal services.
Companies like Clear benefit from the situation being awful, and will thus be invested to maintain the status quo. Much like Intuit lobbying to keep tax preparation difficult to protect their interests providing tax preparation software.
> I think it’s morally wrong to privatize access to federal services.
Airport security is only a federal service provided by the TSA for the purpose of subsidizing the airline industry (by removing a source of liability.) This was part of a series of post-9/11 actions taken to stabilize the air travel industry.
That they have found the way to use the pain imposed to create federal partnerships to subsidize other private services is…unsurprising.
You’re making a choice not to share your biometrics because you don’t trust the company to use and protect your biometric data. Fair enough.
Shouldn’t I have the choice to trust them and get the improved service due to their being able to do the biometric check?
I’m not sure what you mean by privatizing access to federal services. You still have access to that service. If you mean privatizing the administration of the service, well TSA screeners are staffed by private contractors.
If you’re arguing that the federal government should even the playing field and provide the option to supply them with biometrics and get better service as a result (and get Clear out of the way), then I would certainly agree with that. But honestly I am not sure what you’re arguing for, other than denying people access to a service they are willing to make the privacy trade-off for because it bothers you they get through security faster than you do.
Nothing, it’s the paid for line cutting that is the problem (with airports getting a cut for enabling it). TSA could do the same biometrics verification, and arguably does with their latest credential authentication tech, where your ID is what is used to proof your travel plans at the agent podium. It’s a short hop to TSA doing facial recognition instead of scanning your ID.
With CLEAR, the biometrics are just the theater to enable the venue rev share and traveler benefit (cutting the line).
Not at all. They're the gatekeepers of the queue for access the inspection area behind the line, where the real bottleneck exists.
The ID check is currently an excuse to put that gatekeeper out front; they could do it as part of the inspection area and not impact a single thing. It could even be easily automated (it effectively is).
At the airport I regularly fly out of the id check is performed as part of the inspection area. There is a TSA id check station directly before each body/carry-on scanning station.
The solution• to these kinds of problems is integration. If some people have their wants and needs meet and their complaints addressed far more often than the rest of us, then the only way for the system to get better for everyone is if those people are mixed in with the rest of us and don’t just get to opt out and use a better system just for them.
•Also in this case abolish the TSA. Useless make work security theater.
CLEAR and PreCheck are small potatoes. What I want is to require everyone who flies to go through the TSA line, including anyone flying private. Don't allow congresspeople to bypass the TSA (which I believe they're allowed to do). If the people in charge of the government and the multimillionaires and billionaires who control them had to go through that, I bet there'd be a lot more interest in fixing things.
I want to see the President of the United States stand in a crappy TSA line like the rest of us each time he boards his VC25.
Congresspeople don’t get to skip security lines. The number of times I’ve seen senators and reps flying from DCA on Thursday night get annoyed because the pre check is long and I blast past them in Clear is huge.
My favorite was when it was Rep Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who notably pushed hard for the sort of security theater he was then complaining about. I was already two drinks in when he stormed into the SkyClub all miffed. And then I got to sit next to him on the plane! I doubt the man could see the irony.
Why? The point of TSA in theory is to prevent you from taking a weapon onto a plane. If you are flying on your own plane or one you lease what benefit is there in going through TSA?
The whole point was to stop people hijacking or destroying a plane. If you've got the money to fly private you could just rent the plane for a day and fly it yourself. Plus i don't think there's been a single case of people hijacking a private jet...
> Don't allow congresspeople to bypass the TSA
the only people in commercial airports who can skip TSA AFIAK is diplomats, and that would be based under international law exempting them from search by another nation
> the only people in commercial airports who can skip TSA AFIAK is diplomats, and that would be based under international law exempting them from search by another nation
This is not accurate. Diplomatic pouches are exempt from search, but those require a bunch of accompanying paperwork. The diplomat or courier still has to go through security screening.
Yes, exactly. That and I'm a firm believer that laws in our country should apply to everyone regardless of status. I think it's unconscionable that our leaders have no qualms about passing laws that the rest of us have to follow and then promptly exempting themselves from those laws.
Hey, haven't talked to you in years! Great to see your handle. :) I did eventually get precheck but I agree with the theory. I just can't inconvenience myself that much 40+ times a year.
Oh hey! Good to see you. Still in Seattle, or did you move on?
I certainly wouldn't judge anyone for using precheck; it's probably the practical choice. I have simply chosen to be (politely) obstinate about TSA procedures as a form of protest; a little bit of monkeywrenching by doing it all the hard way.
People fail to realize that TSA is just the nationalization and standardization of the system in place pre-9/11. It wasn't new or unprecedented. Instead of a Wackenhut (now G4S) contractor making $17k scanning bags it became a government employee making $21k.
You are remembering a past that never existed if you think things used to be better.
Things are better now, unless you are 90 years old remembering the 1960s. A spate of communist hijackings of airplanes led to bag and bodily inspections in the early 70s.
Here's security officers hand-inspecting every single carry-on (and frisking every single passenger) in 1973: https://imgur.com/a/n2HRbtE
I started flying internationally constantly for work after Lockerbie. For years I had to remove and power on every single electronic device I carried (and I carried, for the time, many) to demonstrate no components had been replaced by explosives. Not only in the US but also Europe and Asia.
Today is better than any time in the past, again, unless you're on death's door remembering flying in the 1950s and 1960s.
Put your bags on the conveyer, walk through the scanner, done. Based on my observations the people who have problems with this are those unfamiliar with the procedures needed (like removing the Mr. T-style amount of jewelry they're wearing) to make things move smoothly.
Much better and faster than staff with nylon rods poking around in every bag and frisking every person.
Not sure about international flights but I remember airport security in the 90s. You put your bag in an x-ray machine and walked through a metal detector. If it beeped they wanded you. It was like entering an important museum and was much quicker and less dehumanizing than the modern process. There wasn't this BS with liquids or removing your shoes and the people running the process had less power over you because they weren't wannabe cops working for the federal government. Most people back then weren't carrying electronics so rhey probably didn't get flagged the way you did.
> There wasn't this BS with liquids or removing your shoes and the people running the process had less power over you because they weren't wannabe cops working for the federal government.
This illustrates the misunderstandings about the TSA.
The TSA didn't make up the liquids rule. The British did and then they promulgated those rules up through the ICAO (international civil aviation organization).
The TSA implemented the rule because the US is a member of the ICAO, as did many other countries.
If the TSA didn't exist, the FAA or DOT would have implemented the liquid rule instead and a private security contractor would be throwing away water bottles instead of "wannabe cops working for the federal government".
You're arguing two separate points as if they're the same thing.
Point 1: the TSA in particular is not at fault for the modern state of airport security
Point 2: airport security is better than it has been since the 60s
You spent most of your first post arguing point 2, which is counter to my own experience, and which GP contradicted. Rather than address their points, you've ignored their argument and switched to point 1, which they didn't even challenge.
My summary of the situation: the culture of fear that arose in the wake of 9/11 has resulted in a slough of changes that as a whole have made the experience of getting on a plane materially worse than it was prior to 9/11. One of those changes was the establishment of the TSA. While the TSA does not itself bear much if any of the responsibility for the problems with the security process, they do serve as a figurehead for all of those changes. And yes, I agree with GP that airport security is much more inconvenient than it was in the 90s.
My indicator is how early you're advised to arrive before a flight. In the 80s and 90s, the common wisdom was to show up an hour early, or an hour and a half to two hours for international flights. After 9/11, that bumped up to an hour and a half for domestic, and now after COVID, they recommend 2 hours or more for a domestic flight, 3 during holidays.
The line-cutting is annoying, but the whole thing is just an excuse for the collection of biometric data, which is a much larger issue. Clear's business model is pretty clear - they'll annoy a large portion of America into giving them their biometrics, and once they have that, expand across the country into some kind of semi-mandatory subscription to access businesses or public spaces. How else does Clear become a "daily habit" used "12 times a day", as the CEO says in the article?
This has huge potential to track people everywhere they go. It's also not hard to imagine Clear adding some kind of "risk score" that bans people from every Clear-enabled business, which has massive potential for abuse.
Pre check has generally been a separate line at most airports I've been at. It also allows a changed security posture: don't have to take off shoes, belt, use the nudie scanner. Clear literally just lets you cut in line.
Pre-TSA, when airports ran their own security checkpoints, it was not unusual to have a separate line for first class and high-level frequent flyer members. So that aspect of it has always been around. We just made it a governmentally-enforced one.
Plus, a lot of Precheck people have it via Global Entry, which really is paying to skip the line. Since I got GE, I have never once spent as much time at immigration coming back to the US as it took me to walk from the gate to the immigration hall. Longest line ever was maybe five minutes, because an entire jumbo jet's flight crew was in front of me. I've bypassed hours-long lines.
Some airports still have separate lines (including to customs and immigration) for some frequent flyer status holders. Some are plainly visible, like in IST, some are better hidden with a separate entry into the airport itself.
At the highest end of flyer status, some airlines will escort you out of the jetway via the access door just as you step off the plane (before you even enter the terminal) and drive you directly to your next flight, where you climb the stairs, enter via the jetway access door, and walk onto the plane. That’s for very important customers with tight connections.
It has nothing to do with important or connections, just the passenger's wallet size. It is a service like any other, and last I inquired it was $400 per person for each end of the flight.
I think an important distinction here is that Clear doesn't want a separate line. They want to cut in the PreCheck line to make more money. The worse they can make PreCheck, the more money they make.
most of the time it takes significantly more time to faff around taking off shoes/belts, taking laptops/liquids out of bags than it does to get through the ID check section.
Though as more advanced scanners come in this might lose value, at many airports now everything stays in your bag anyway, shoes stay on and you go through the whole body scan (which takes 5 seconds). It was amazing how quick it was going through las vegas
I'll admit to getting PreCheck because the wait tends to be shorter. But allowing people to keep their shoes on, their laptop in their bag, etc, makes the wait shorter for everyone. And if I had my way, no one would need to go through the TSA security theater.
I definitely like the shorter line, but the reduced friction from not having to unpack your bags with laptops, take off your shoes, and walk-through scanner instead of pose-for-the-scan-then-wait scanner is worth it alone, even if you do have to wait in the same line.
It's surprising to me to see this opinion (echoed in scarby2's sibling comment), because outside of the laptop ritual, the other things register as approximately zero friction to me.
In some sense air travel is an exercise in friction and waiting. Standing in line definitely rubs me the wrong way, but others might weight their inconveniences very differently. Perhaps keeping your shoes on should be a separate upcharge from a shorter wait :P
So do some airport lounges in some airports. And memberships to those lounges usually cost 3-4x/yr what Clear does (in fact IIRC one of the lounges in SFO has an exit to security that gets to cut directly in front of Clear).
TSA Pre-Check's artifically low, non-market price for line cutting is the reason Clear isn't selling for $100+ per flight, with several layers of price discrimination.
In a free market, there wouldn't be a need to sell line cutting in the first place because it would be legal to run an airline that you can fly on without dealing with the TSA at all. Forcing everyone to go through the TSA is inherently non-market, so there can't be a market price for it.
I don't think Clear would have the same number of customers if they charged that much. Everyone would continue to stand in line and complain about how bad the TSA is at its job.
If it were an option selected when purchasing a ticket, I suspect it would be on the order of first/business class in terms of popularity. Maybe the price point needs some work, but certainly ~a lot~ more than $15/yr for the first tier of priority).
Clear and Pre-Check both have signficant friction to sign-up. If line cutting was offered with little friction (i.e. without security considerations), I think it would be quite popular.
Perhaps the civilizational feature america inherited from the British is their love of standing in lines: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tjgyWQ8nU. Like, I’m pretty sure if you did a scatter plot of how readily people queue up and GDP per capita you’d see a close relationship. I love using Clear but I feel like I’m contributing to the downfall of American society by using it.
"Airports empower Clear Secure’s employees to issue instructions to all flyers going through security—including those who never signed up for CLEAR."
That's... interesting. So if I'm reading that right someone working for Clear at the airport can just wave anyone through? And/Or stop anyone from getting to their plane?
No, it's saying Clear employees can manage the line of travelers. They have permission from the airport to ask non-Clear people to back up and wait, as the author mentions at the start of the article. TSA has no control over that part of the queue.
So they can maximally inconvenience the non-customers. Things like, "oh, you waited for 2 hours and are about to miss your plane? Please back up so our special customer can jump the line".
Cost optimization can turn anything to crap. As a kid I used to go to amusement parks on off days and get 10-20x the riding in, because nobody was there. Often could go from a ride exit to a ride entrance and hop right into a seat. Now they "optimize" this, run rides so you always have to wait 20-30 minutes.
Wow this author is salty. Wait till they find out you can pay money for expedited passport renewal and for Group 1 boarding of the aircraft and for an Uber to pick you up 5 minutes early on the way to the airport.
I disagree with the author regarding their complains surrounding rich people going through life easier. Unfortunately that will always be possible and complaining about it muddied this article
However, I agree with the author that a private company should not be getting between me and my government. I am okay with TSA as long as it is my government making sure airports are safe. I am fine with paying more for expedited passports because that is a deal between me and my government. I am fine with expedited boarding because that never involved my government and it never should.
This is a situation, like the author said, that is similar to the intuit catastrophe. Paying CLEAR is equivalent (in the long term) to ensuring that no forward progress is made on simplifying and expediting airport security.
That’s a valuable distinction you are pointing out. I agree 100% in theory. For example, on certain municipal websites in New York City where I live, credit cards are not natively accepted for transactions, but a link is provided to an authorized private company who charges a non-trivial commission. This is problematic.
On the other hand though, I returned yesterday from a business trip to Israel, where taxes fund a highly functional and adequate healthcare system, but many well-to-do tech workers also pay for private health insurance which allows your family members to be seen almost immediately by a specialist when needed. I would be okay with this system in the United States as a compromise to supersede the dysfunctional system we have now.
What’s the hoo-ha here? My expectations of privacy while flying are zero. Heck, Delta lets me on board via facial recognition, don’t even have to show the boarding pass. Passport control is photo based too.
My understanding of Clear is they positively identify me via iris scan, then match it up to a background check and my KTN. With that, I’m a “known traveler” and don’t need an experienced officer to review my documents.
$100 or $189 is trivial compared to all the plane tickets and other expenses of travel. Over a couple dozen trips a year, I’m grateful for the reduction in waiting time and stress.
If there was another tier that had an even faster and more pleasant experience, maybe off to the side somewhere, I’d pay double.
"$100 or $189 is trivial compared to all the plane tickets and other expenses of travel. Over a couple dozen trips a year, I’m grateful for the reduction in waiting time and stress."
Don't assume everyone else has the privilege of not being worried about an additional $100-$200 cost to airline travel, it isn't a cute look.
Well, yeah, if you fly once a year. So don’t buy Clear. If you’re on 80 planes a year, maybe buy Clear. Seems an obvious implication of “a couple dozen trips a year”, but now I’ve said it expressly.
Personal attacks are not allowed here, regardless of how justified they are or you feel they are.
You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly, so I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I have TSA Pre and I am glad I got it. But I tried CLEAR (they had some free trials early on) and tbh I don't see much point. Yes, you get to cut the line. I've never waited in Pre line more than 5-10 mins. Why would I pay for it? While $200/yr is not really a big deal I just don't see much point. Maybe if I were an executive important enough so 10 mins matter but not important enough to get their own private jet - I'd get it, but otherwise - no. That said, I don't see them making anything worse. Yes, it's kinda annoying that some company gets to earn money for solving a problem that shouldn't be a problem from the start, and with zero competition at that, but in a grand scheme of things it's not bothering me that much. Their plans about "12 times a day" look spooky though - what do they plan to do for me to need ID verification services that often?
To be fair, if someone goes through the cost, time, and privacy invasion to get line cutting, more power to them. Pre I think is okay, Clear seems dubious. Clear, similar to public-private partnerships, generally shouldn't exist.
Airports and airlines are businesses, not government facilities or public commons. The primary reason the TSA exists is so profit motives don't trump security standards and end up with another 9/11.
"Clear Secure CEO Caryn Seidman-Becker has big plans for her company’s core product. In a profile in Forbes last year she said that 'We want Clear to become part of people’s daily habit, to go from 12 times a year using it—which is how people on average were using it in airports—to 12 times a day.'"
Couldn't agree more. We need better ways of fighting against this at multiple levels. No CEO should even aspire to be so intrusive and rent seeking. Part of this seems cultural, though I'm not sure what the fix is.
People pay for access, convenience, and improved service in many areas of life.
Better passes at Disney World. VIP concert tickets that get you access to abundant restrooms, better food and drinks. I’ve seen some restaurants in S.F. that seem to have moved to a model where depending on which part of the restaurant you reserve you get different menus and service (I forget which, but saw that this summer).
Honest question, I’m not sure exactly what it is you want to disallow - can you elaborate?
I specifically would prefer to live in a culture that 1) establishes societal expectations of a relatively even playing field, and 2) encourages companies that seek to add value, not rent seek.
Clear is a perfect example of a company that exists to extract value from a system, and and company that will fight to maintain the status quo of a shitty experience for everyone else. Every time I pass the Clear line, I wonder why some private enterprise was given this space, and handed this right to insert themselves in the security process.
> establishes societal expectations of a relatively even playing field
I want to agree with you, but disregarding the clear thing - is it really optimal (and not only locally optimal) to not have any means (not per se financial) to not have everyone be handled equally and fairly, especially if we're talking things like "expedited access", usually for people who have put in some work once in order to speed up their daily/weekly/monthly thing over the average person doing the activity once per year or decade.
Maybe I'm just being too focused on this example at hand, but if you look at immigration queues, we often have these "this is for local people where we don't have to check anything, really" and "this is for people who might need to find their visa and it could be complicated, thus a long line" - or the simple example of buying a monthly ticket for public transport and not standing in line at the ticket machine.
I think the idea of precheck / pre vetting makes a lot of sense. It just shouldn't be outsourced and privatized to a company with an incentives alignment problem.
Your example about locals vs. foreigners at customs and border control also makes sense to me. I'm fine waiting in a longer line when I get to Europe since I'm not an EU citizen.
Think about EZPass on the highway. Anyone sitting in line waiting to pay a toll manually was just lazy in not setting up automatic toll payment.
For one thing it exacerbates inequality and makes it even more in your face. Inequality is the cancer that is destroying the US and other "democracies."
I think we need to find a nice balance in which wealthy individuals can gain access to better services in some areas of life, but not ALL areas of life. It is reassuring to us "normals" that we as a society reserve some scarcity decisions to be based on an even playing field, or at least something other that wealth or cost.
Because it won't remain that way. Clear will push for their service to be used in as many places as possible, and try to get legislators to create reasons to require such a system.
The long lines at airports don't need to exist. It's security theater. They are selling a solution to a problem of their own making.
The fact that that problem is a gateway to a necessity (for many) like air travel, puts it clearly in the category of extortion. If I were in charge, Clear's business would be outright illegal.